It Finally Happened As we had been joking on another posting on shifting . JoeS had mentioned he would probably be the first to wear out the shifter well... I'm sad to say that I beat you to it Joe.

125,000 km, 77,600 miles of heavily using the shifter brought it on... my first repair due to wearing something out.

The Symptoms1) I would get warning light lighting up after starting up and then shifting into D, making me think there was a much larger problem. A restart and shift again would often make the problem disappear.

Diagnosis The mechanic recognized this problem from other i Mievs he had serviced with about the same mileage & said the shift selector sensor needed to be changed. So Far So good. The problem seems to be gone.

Just curious. Did the contact pads wear out, or did they just need cleaned? The stiff shifter was likely the cable needing lubricated (I think another member had to do that to fix the car not going into Park).

sandange, thank you for posting the details. Yes, you beat me to it, but I bet jray3, who is close to you in mileage, is paying attention. Sounds as though what was replaced is something the Mitsu repair manual refers to as the "Shift Position Switch" located on the transaxle. With the initial symptom being stiffness of the selector, I can't help but wonder if it wasn't a lubrication issue. We'll never know, but glad you're back on the road again. Considering all the moisture and snow and temperature extremes, your cars in northern climes are sure subjected to a lot more abuse than those in our very benign California environment... until the next earthquake.

I'm not worrying about it too much at the moment as it only happens when I am parking but does anyone have the part number for the shifter sender unit?I'll take the cover off and give the shifter a good clean out and see if some lubrication makes and difference.

I had meant to have a look at the shifter at the weekend and jack the car up so I could see underneath and give it a good clean, but never got round to it.

Today, I start the car and move it and the same problem happened but it was when going from reverse into park. The car registered neutral and flashed at me even though the shifter was in P.

I turned the car off and tried to restart but again the shifter registered neutral and wouldn't start.I tried once more and the car came to life!

Car only has <30k miles on it but it is 7 years old. 7 years of UK damp and winters have taken their toll Still love the car!

Makes sense, I'd say road salt could have a lot to do with it too - not had a look at the linkage assembly in detail though. What I would say is there's almost no rust protection on the car, so I bought the Karcher under chassis washer and clean it a few times a year (including at the end of the winter. I also undersealed the car last year, which was more of a peace of mind thing on my part - and i'll get less road salt exposure in southern England than you in Scotland. If nothing else - give it a load of WD40 or lithium grease?

I bet the UK parts prices are higher than the US ones too... always are.